Voucher Supporters: Register Your Discontent
I’d like to encourage everyone who voted FOR referendum 1 to please go to the Parents For Choice in Education website and register as a supporter. If the voucher concept ever resurfaces to sees the light of day in Utah (and I think it will since we only needed to sway an additional 12% of voters), we’re going to need people on the ground to pass out fliers, place yard signs, and host neighborhood meetings in their homes.
There was just too much misinformation out there. The opposition spent millions of UEA dollars to send daily mailers and buy up something like 6x the TV spots, and those anti-voucher ads were full of lies. The only way you can combat that kind of FUD campaign is to have a groundswell of grassroot support, willing to do what it takes to make sure that every citizen has the facts.
Please sign up now so that next time we can know our supporters and better coordinate our efforts. Help us ensure that parent’s choice in education never gets railroaded by union special interests again.
This is not over.
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Choice in Education, Politics | 
November 7, 2007 10:24 am
By John Gilbert, November 8, 2007 @ 5:02 pm
What we need now is for everyone who’s upset about this to run for state and county delegate at their neighborhood caucus in Feb. We must ONLY allow delegates to be elected who fully support the parental choice plank of the party platform. This will be key in cleaning up the party.
By Brad Duncan, November 13, 2007 @ 5:07 pm
I still don’t see how getting the government more involved in the private school system is in any way helping the FREE market. (Hence the word FREE, as in “free of government”) Leave government’s dirty mitts out of my private schools! In the cities where vouchers have gone through, the gov’t has an easier time telling “private” (although with vouchers they’re less private than before) schools what to do. I don’t like that.
By Clint, January 14, 2008 @ 2:12 am
The more I research vouchers, the more reasonable they become. Something needs to be done about this broke down school system we have. I don’t think this is as much a solution as it is a band-aid. However, at least the pro-voucher side is trying to do something!
Why no criticism of Jon Huntsman Jr.? He was terrible for the pro-voucher argument! Every notable supporter of Referendum 1 hid under their desk. Utah needs to wake up and realize that having a one party system in this state is killing us. Mitt Romney even said it is a terrible system, after helping with the Olympics.
We need to double the funding in our public schools, double our teachers pay and have stiffer requirements for teachers to be able to weed out the bad one’s. I don’t think vouchers are the absolute best solution. They are more like a band-aid to a much bigger problem. No one should be against choice in education. If parents want to send their kid to a private school, they can. Having a voucher for these kids to be able to help them pay for it, is not a terrible idea. It is not a solution to the bigger problem we face as far as education is concerned in this state.
If you care about choice so much, why don’t you advocate choice in government? For to long Utah has had a terrible one party system and it is destroying this state. Utah needs to learn that voting Republican is not a vote for Gordon B. Hinckley.
Clint
P.S. If nothing is done to improve education by the time another voucher bill is passed. I will support vouchers as a way of at least doing something.
By Jordy, January 22, 2008 @ 2:07 am
@Clint
“We need to double the funding in our public schools, double our teachers pay and have stiffer requirements for teachers to be able to weed out the bad one’s. [sic]”
I agree, but who doesn’t? The NEA, that’s who. (How dare you attach increased expectations with increased pay?) Sometimes you can tell when something is good just by who hates it.
I should reiterate that I think this program would have raised teachers’ pay — especially for good teachers — by creating a market for their job. Think about it, if teachers got what we’re already paying for mediocre education (30 students @ $4000), that’s a lot of dough. How does 120 grand minus expenses sound? You would see damn good teachers coming out of the woodwork.
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“If you care about choice so much, why don’t you advocate choice in government?”
I do advocate choice, that’s what an election is. But people don’t always make the obvious choices. This referendum was an example.
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“For to [sic] long Utah has had a terrible one party system and it is destroying this state. Utah needs to learn that voting Republican is not a vote for Gordon B. Hinckley.”
Look, I dislike LDS peoples’ “monopartyistic” leanings as much as the next man, and I would hate a (hypothetical) 1-party system more than I hate the nation’s 2-party system; but Utah is not a one-party system. The failure of this conservative referendum proves that, and yes you can blame your friendly neighborhood (and nationwide) Democrats for that.
BTW, I’m not Republican; I’m a registered independent with very libertarian leanings. I’ll probably be a registered Libertarian someday, but I dislike the idea of any candidate counting on my vote.